My boys

i just found these on my desktop.  I wrote them before Carrie was born, but probably right before since I never published them.  i just wanted to record my favorite things about my boys.  Lest you think they are perfect all of the time, I decided only to record the good stuff, that's all I want to remember anyway.

James

James is my calm child.  He can get plenty crazy when Spencer is around, but on his own his is quite mild.  James loves people.  He remembers the people that we know and always says hi to them.  He is good at noticing lonely people, and makes them feel welcome.  Everyone likes James.  Now that he can talk I love to ask James to tell me about things.  He usually includes sound effects and his own made up language when he is unsure of what to say next.  James loves to sing.  He walks around all day making up songs and singing them.  At sacrament meeting he always opens the Hymn book and sings some nonsense while smiling at me and making a very cute face.  James is very good at telling us he loves us, and will keep repeating it until he gets a reply, which sometimes takes a while with Spencer.  James is good with directions and remembers how to get places, which is usually good until he runs home when I don’t see.  James likes to play whatever Spencer is playing, but when he is on his own he usually plays cars.  He loves anything with wheels, and recognizes people’s cars in the parking lot.  It would be okay with me if he learned to fix cars since Devon and I have no clue.  James loves preschool and has no fear of being left alone.  He always asks me “Can I say good-bye mommy?”  Which means, are you going to leave today?  He rides the bus home and always says it goes “super-fast and Crazy.”  James is always happy to see you, he runs and gives Devon a hug everyday when he gets home.  The other day Devon was walking up with our friend Christy and James ran up saying “Christy, Christy,” and then hugged Devon instead, it was pretty funny.  James likes to have people around and asks me all day when we can go get Spencer from school.  James likes to cuddle and always wants me to carry him although I have to tell him no now, he is too big with the baby.  He is a mommy’s boy and always climbs on my lap when I’m working on the computer or anything.  James is a very good bike rider and may get rid of training wheels before Spencer does.  I remember he could ride his bike and steer before he could walk.

Spencer

Spencer is defiantly my crazy boy, but I remember before I had him I thought “I hope if this is a boy he’s curious and wants to learn about everything.”  I sure got my wish.  Spencer loves to know how everything works and is constantly experimenting with stuff.  Spencer loves to make things out of anything.  I can tell when he doesn’t have school because our house is a lot more messy.  He is really good at drawing, but he always draws imaginary things like machines that make toys and candy.  Spencer loves to make up games (like his dad).  The other day he found a block and said “I have a game, lets roll this dice and when it lands on the cherry we can take a bite of our snack.”  I try to say “yes” whenever I can to his crazy ideas, they are usually messy and time consuming, but very creative.  Spencer has a huge imagination.  I can see him writing a fantasy book when he grows up, he is fascinated by fantasy stories.  Spencer is in Kindergarten and tolerates school.  He loves the learning part, but not taking a rest or having to sit still.  The other day he told me he wanted the angels to take him up to heaven because then he wouldn’t have to take a nap.  I told him he has to wait to go to heaven for a while.  Spencer memorizes things really well.  They study Bible verses at his school and he has about 15 memorized.  Spencer has so much energy.  He loves to wrestle with his daddy and have races (if he wins).  Right now he loves sledding, and goes everyday on the little bit of snow that we have left here in MV.  He loves to explore and always wants to go to the field behind our house.  I see spencer being a writer when he grows up and traveling to find cool places to set his stories in.  He loves reading.  I got a graphic novel once from the library and he looked at it all the time.  He also loves super heroes and can tell you the names of most of them.  Spencer says the craziest things and is always making us laugh.  He loves to be scared.  He always decorates our house for the next holiday and makes Valentine’s for people all year round.

Horton and Fly Guy

Our local library (where I am not the librarian anymore) had a "bring your favorite book character to life" night. Spencer dressed up as Horton from "Horton Hears a Who" and James was Fly Guy from the Fly Guy series. They each won first place in their categories, which were "best Horton" and "best Fly Guy." We had a great time coming up with the costumes.

Carrie also took first in her category of cutest baby, no surprise there!

Company

We were lucky to have Devon's mom come for a week before Easter to help us out. On Friday Devon had the day off so we went to Bluff Fort.

We have been here a lot of times, but every time we see something new.  This time Devon and his mom got to go into Jens Nielson's house.  A worker at the fort lives in it, and invited them to come and see. 

On Saturday Melissa and her family and Devon's dad joined us.  The dare-devils- everyone except Devon's mom and I and Huck and James and Carrie) went on the hike behid our house.  Here's Naya crawling through the crawl space.

This is the first time we have let Spencer go on this hike.  He had a great time.

James and Huck had a great time here.  The next time I asked James to take a bath he said "I want to take a bath with Huck!"  We love family!

Easter 2013

We got to participate in 3 egg hunts this year. We only have pictures of 2- but there was plenty of candy to be had in our house!

Our Easter Bunny comes on Saturday morning.  The boys- oh yeah and a girl now- got stuffed bunnies, chocolate bunnies and a marble race.

The most wonderful thing of Easter was that we blesses Carrie on Easter.  Devon's parents and my sister Melissa and her family got to join us.  It was a wonderful blessing.  We had a big dinner with all of our friends here, and the weather was wonderful.  it was a great day.

Here is our sweet Carrie in her blessing dress.

holi day festival

Our neighbor had a Holi Day celebration again. This time I got to attend, and it is even more fun than it looks.  I love the bright colors, and how clean you feel after taking a shower.

Leprechaun traps

So we have a new tradition that we started last year to make leprechaun traps.  In case you didn't know leprechauns only come out the night before St. Patrick's Day.  They love money and sparkly things, so we build traps to lure them in.  If your traps are good enough they leave you a treasure.  Spencer loved doing this, I had to limit him to six traps.  The leprechauns left us a treasure of chocolate coins, green tattoos (temporary of course) and wind up bath toys.  They left pretty convincing footprints too!

I can't get the video of Spencer to load, which is too bad because he really made six intricate traps.  He is very creative.

The boys demonstrating their traps. Also over Devon's Spring Break the boys finished their stickers on their "good choices charts." the grand prize was camping with Daddy, but it was still too cold at night for our level of camping gear, so they camped in Devon's classroom- and loved it.

when Carrie was born

So I wanted to record the birth story, of sorts.  It wasn't too exciting, but I think that is a good thing.  So when I went to my 36 week doctor's appointment I was very swollen.  I have never had a problem with this before, but I really wasn't too concerned.  My blood pressure was very high- somewhere close to 150/95- I don't really remember because before this the numbers meant nothing to me.  The nurses seemed very worried, but the doctor seemed to be quite calm (since then I have realized that's just his personality, which is a good thing in a doctor).  Anyway, I had gained like 7 pounds in 2 weeks in water weight.  The doctor gave me an antibiotic and had me do some tests at home.  A nurse told me to go home and lay down and stay down as much as possible.  When I came back 2 days later I had lost almost 5 of those pounds in water weight- yes I went to the bathroom a lot.  Unfortunately my blood pressure was still very high, so he said we would be delivering earlier than expected.  I went to get an ultrasound at the hospital, but I had to wait for 4 hours for an appointment.  Luckily there are some people (the Adams) who were in our branch when we were in Mexican Hat who let me and two crazy boys come stay at their house.  They fed us lunch and even watched the boys while I got the ultrasound.  I hope I can grow up to be as giving as them.  The ultrasound said I was 37 weeks along and the baby was healthy and 7 pounds, all good news for an early delivery.  The doctor said we will wait for the test results, but probably deliver sometime the next week.  Thankfully my mom was able to change her plans and come a week early.  I am so glad she came before we actually had the baby.  So the test came back positive for pre-eclamsia and we scheduled the delivery for early Thursday morning.  At this hospital they have you come in the day before to do blood work and get some "instruction."  So Devon and I went up on Wednesday afternoon and planed to stay in a hotel since the hospital is 2 hours away.  At the hospital my blood pressure was even higher than it had been, but the doctor seemed not too worried, especially when we said we were staying in town anyway.  We went to the hotel and watched TV (and decided we haven't been missing much since getting rid of TV).  We went out to a little mom and pop place for dinner.  The owner found out I was to deliver the next day and told Devon to come back for a celebration dinner on the house.  Anyway, we went to bed but I really didn't sleep, too nervous for the next day I guess.  At about 3am our phone rang- that was weird.  The hospital was calling and apparently our doctor had a very strong impression that I should come into the hospital then instead of later, so we went.  I so grateful to have a doctor that would listen to the spirit and follow it, even though he didn't know why.  They actually called all of the hotels in Monticello because I was mistaken about the one we actually had reservations for.  Nothing happened, but he did have me start an IV with medicine for pre-eclamsia to prevent seizures  (I am glad I didn't know that's what eclamsia really is).  Besides taking forever to get the IV's in everything went smoothly.  They delivered at the scheduled time, 7:30, well actually 7:47.  One thing that was odd was that they put the spinal block in when I was sitting up, I have never done that before, but it worked.  They gave me some great medicine after the block wore off so I didn't feel anything the first day.  Really the recovery has been pretty good, still painful but good all things considered.  At first I thought "This is the way to go", I didn't have any traumatic labor, I was only in the hospital 4 hours before I had a baby.  Now I am pretty sick of recovering and wish I felt better, but I guess you can't have everything.  We do have the most important thing.  Carrie was born healthy and only 5lb 11oz.  She is very tiny, but very sweet.  She spent about 30 minutes in the incubator- but that's the only extra.  We are so lucky to have her sweet spirit in our home.  The boys love her, and she has here daddy wrapped around her little finger already.  she's not much of one for sleeping at night, but she's worth it.